Crypto Goes to Congress

be regulated by the government. We're gonna talk to one of the executives who testified, as well as his colleague about some of the big issues that came up, as well as about what a wild year it was in crypto. But first of all, Donna, I have to tell you, you you know, I was watching this hearing yesterday and as you know, you give me a hard time for asking very long, convoluted questions. And after watching this hearing, I had an epiphany. I think I should run for Congress.

I think I would fit in Oh wow, yeah, honestly you might. I have the same thought when I was watching the hearings. And if you do, all I want to ask you is that I be your campaign manager, because I don't think that your jokes might they might not be good enough for you to actually run for Congress. Really really sorry to break that to you. Yeah, well, I you know, I think the problem is you have questionable taste and jokes sexually, but you have excellent taste

in podcast guests. And I'm super excited about the two that you talked and joining us this week. What a what great timing, Vilda. Timing is everything in in markets in podcast, and you've got us two great guests for this week, So uh, tell the listeners who they are and bring them into the show here. Yeah, I'm as excited as you are about the two guests we have. We have the chief executive officer of FTX that's Sam BANKMNT Freed, and we have f t x u S

President Brett Harrison. They're both joining us, and I want to welcome you both to the podcast. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. Yes, Sam, I've got a lot of questions about you know, sort of f t x's goals and the cryptocurrency world in general. First, though, I think a question that's on a lot of listeners minds outside of that space is I know you're in touch with Tom Brady from time to time, and I want to ask on behalf of all NFL fans other than the Tampa

Bay Buccaneers, is this guy ever going to retire? I I hope not. I will see, but I'm I'm expecting Steven d That's that's my my kind of betting line. Age seventy. Oh my gosh. All right, all right, that's not good news to the rest of the NFL. I think he'll still be uh, he'll still be winning games at age seventy. Maybe you can talk to Giselle. I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, she's uh. They're both

doing pretty well. And it's it's bad news for me because my team, the Buffalo Bills, are playing Brady this weekend. So that's bad that is might not be a good weekend for me. Well, they've got a history of that. But Sam, if we can maybe just start with you. Mike mentioned the hearings that we had this week. I want to actually ask you about what the hearings were like, because it seemed like the quality of the questions was a little bit better than what we've seen in the past,

or maybe what even a lot of people were expecting. Yeah, I totally agree with that, and I think the questions were better in more informed than I was expecting. I also think that they were more more balanced. I think that I was expecting I think, more grandstanding, and and I think I was just wasn't we surprised? In general? I think I think like to has done a really good job of starting to get you know, to speed on digital assets, and I think that they showed a

lot of eagerness to continue learning. You know, Sam and and Brett you chime into if you have any thoughts, obviously, But what I think about sort of the where we

are in the evolution of the cryptocurrency market. You know, I'm I'm an older gentleman, as listeners know, I've been covered markets for a long time, and I think back to like ten or fifteen years when the stock market was sort of stole in the adolescents phase when it comes to you know, electronic trading, algorithmic trading and computerized markets, and boy, there were all sorts of hiccups and flash crashes, and you know the famous night Trading debacle where a

bad algorithm almost you know, wiped out the firm. Uh in a few minutes, and it seems to me like there's a lot of parallels now where crypto is in sort of that that adolescent stage where there's still stuff going wrong. And I want to give us an example. A few months ago, Wasn't on FTX, another exchange where the price of bitcoin I believe it's due to some error and an algorithm, someone sold bitcoin for like eighty

seven percent below the market price. I wondered, how you guys look at the market now in the sort of respect to this idea of regulation and what needs to be done to to get more mature. Is that type of thing I described, Um, is that a problem that you think needs to be solved or is it more the type of thing that's like, well, thanks for playing guide,

you know, better luck next time. Yeah, I mean, I think breast some thoughts on this, but you know, I think briefly, is there one of many examples of times where yeah, I think these are absolutely problems that need to be solved, but I think that they're pretty straightforward solutions to a lot of them. And like, you know, price bands are just sort of like you know, it's

not like we put them on JEX. Is not that complex, and I think that in a lot of cases is like, yeah, there's definitely ways the market needs to grow, but it shouldn't be that hard to get there. Yeah. I think the fact that cryptocurrency exchanges came about much later in the technological development of the Internet and software and just how how easy it is to deploy software on a cloud, for example, means that the barrier to entry to making an exchange was super loud, which has its good parts

and it's bad parts. Like if you want to, you know, write in your garage some code and try to deploy a new nastac tomorrow, you can't. There's way too many barriers centers of doing that. But there are literally thousands of exchanges where you can buy bitcoint I certainly can't name them all, and there's only a couple that really

matter in terms of volume. But there are thousands of exchanges, which means not all of those players, absent of a clear regulatory framework in the US, are going to create the right rules to make sure that their exchange doesn't scribble a lot and print something way down or just break or you know, be halted for a long time. Uh. And so it's up to exchanges like FTX is just sort of put in the right rules. And you know, Sam, myself, we were at Change Street and other trading firms for

a long time. We're used to how other exchanges work, and it's like, okay, well here's a common sense thing which has put some price bands in place. Not a very difficult thing. But if you haven't been, you know, growing up in that environment, you don't think to do this sort of stuff. So Sam, you said, just to follow up on that and just to expand it a little bit more. You said, there's there are ways for

the market to grow. And I know my team has been thinking about this a lot, because what I hear from time to time is that was the year that crypto sort of grew up is typically the phrase that I hear. So in what ways does the market still have to evolve and in what ways can it grow? As you say, there are ways for it to do. Yeah, I mean, I think like one obvious place is frankly on the regulatory side, where you know, I think that there is a lot of messy parts of the regulatory

eco system today. I think that agains some some fairly straight forwards things could help that a ton. I think just like regulation enforcing that stable points are fully reserved is like something that would address I think a lot of the current concerns around them. And I think that you know, having a feer markets framework for digital asset would be really work. Right now, there is a framework for modity future is, there's a framework for security spot.

It's not clear what their framework is for commodity spot market. They're not all the same framework. It's not clear with their registration framework for a digital asset security token. And I think that these these are all things which I

think have to be addressed. But again I'm optimistic is not that hard to address them within the current system and and to kind of get to a much more robust um and mature place from regulatory perspective, you know, I know coin Base has proposed an s r O self regulatory organization similar to what's in the in place in the stock market and other markets where it's really the you know, the industry is policing itself and not as reliant on sort of an outside regulator to sort

of cover the day by day issues, uh that come up? Is that something you guys would get on board with. Two In general, we're on board with that, and I'm actually one of the exchanges that we own f t x C strivatives. It is an s r oh, it's a d s r O. But when you think about how it is in the equity markets with finn Red for example, Finra as we know it today was the

evolution of decades of equity markets. In order to get to the point where we have the ideal s r O for crypto, this is not something that's going to happen in three months or six months or a year. And we are in the situation right now where there is unclear regulation, with many exchanges choosing to impose different policies upon themselves and thus adding confusion and regulatory risk.

And there's a lot of common sense things that we could do with the existing regulatory frameworks without having to wait for building the perfect s r O for crypto. Yeah, and I basically agree with that. I think, you know, also saying that there should be s ROS and crypto doesn't mean there shouldn't be federal regulatory oversight as well. Like I think that you know, in addition to s ROS, you know, the SEC and the CFC and other regulars

have important les to plan the crypto regulatory ecosystem. I guess, you know, the the issue that comes up a lot is that, you know, sort of the light hand of regulators is kind of what's attractive to a lot of

people in the crypto world and the defied world. Does the US focusing on this and and sort of being trying to be the standard bear for regulation, does that Do you think that makes the US a more attractive or less attractive sort of the capital of the world for for cryptocurrencies or is there a risk that you know, everything goes to uh to some country where uh, you know, they're they're a little more hands off. I would change the but the tenses there a little bit. It has

been something that I think has led to that. And you look today, you know, the United States is something like five to ten percent of global crypto volume, just tiny compared to it's kind of broader fraction of uh, you know, most markets. But but I'm optimistic that it could become that could go from a negative choy positive again without that much work by you know, getting in a more stable position than any worlds in the world.

But yeah, Bright, interested in your thoughts on this. Do yeah, my take is that it's not regulation alone that drives the business away from the US, it's lack of clarity and therefore regulatory uncertainty. Being worried that if you make the wrong decision you might be hit with an enforcement action two years from now makes it a pretty unattractive

place to try to be an entrepreneur. The derivatives markets in the US, for example, on the CFDC are some of the strictest in the world, but we also have most of the world's liquidity and derivatives. Think about the SMP future or the treasury bond futures or gold futures are some of the most liquid instruments in the world under one of the strictest derivatives regimes in the world.

But it's a clear regulatory framework, and that makes it possible for people to innovative, to be able to create exchanges, to be able to either become fcms or dc ms, you know, exchanges or clearing members, and be able to provide liquidity that way. It's just lack of priority, this gray area that everyone's operating in that I think is

driving the talent and the new operations off shore. Yes, some I wanted to get back to that idea of stable coins you mentioned, you know, your your proponent that stable coins should be back on to one uh per dollar. And for listeners who don't aren't too familiar with this space of stable coins basically a cryptocurrency that is designed to track the dollar one to one or or some

other currency one to one. I wondered how to algorithmic backed stable coins fit in or should they be in a completely other bucket than sort of the sort of the tethers of the world that are actually backed by by US dollars. Yeah, I think they should be in any diet. I'm guessing you know an example of one that you're thinking about there, And I think the basic answer is again, I think clarity and transparency are are

the key things here. You know, maybe there's a different word like maybe you have sort of like they were fully reserved stable poins, any of like algorithmics, stable points, or whatever words you want to use, but it should be clearly disclosed users that this isn't a stable point in the sense of being backed one to one by a stable lasset, right, It's an algorithmic thing which attempts to maintain a price pag but could fail and I think it's an interesting product. I think it's a different

product then you know, something like USDC is. While we're talking about regulation, I wanted to bring up tether because that tends to come up during conversations of crypto and regulation, and a lot of regulators say that tether has gotten so large that if something were to go awry, it actually could post challenges to other areas of the market. So if we if we do see something go awry, what areas might you look to to sort of to

see that happening in the first place. Yeah, I mean I think I'll say, like this is I think one of the reasons why it would be really valuable to move to a system where you know, there is a clear regulatory framework for transparency around the reserves of stable points. I think that would go a long way here for it's providing um, you know, concerned protection, systemic risk. UM. I don't think that it's currently at a place where

it is threatening. I think what people are most worried about most things, they do think it is probably back right now by by sufficient assets. But that doesn't necessarily mean it always will be, and that doesn't necessarily mean that there's enough transparency around that it would be I think healthy to move to a framework where there is sort of more enforced transparency around that because they won and wants to take part in uh, you know, in

U S scrypto markets. One think I wanted to and I do want to sort of talk about FTX specifically and what's next for you guys. But one more sort of regulatory based question. And I'm fascinating with the notion of anonymity in the crypto space. I mean, obviously the whole industry was born in anonymity with Satoshi uh No, one's I'm still quite sure who he is. Maybe Sam, if you know, you can break some news here, but

I'm guessing not. But to me, the more scrutiny, the more sort of effects you have looking into this space, the more dangerous anonymity gets, you know, especially when you get into stuff with you know, n f T s and you see these stories about wash trades where you know, it looks like someone selling an n f T to themselves for a couple of thousand ether, you know, and

and and that sort of thing. Does the scrutiny do you guys think, does it sort of make anonymity a dangerous thing, something that's going to be less of a key pillar of of the crypto world going forward. Yeah, personally, I think that the blockchain technology on its own can exist independently of whether or not you have a fully anonymous system that's using that distributed ledge of technology. You think about what f t X does. Not only is it,

you know, non anonymous. I mean we don't publish who is doing the trays with each other, right, it's it's anonymous. That's the same way that a stock exchange is anonymous in that sense. But we are fully ky seeing our users. We need to know exactly that they're not from a sanction jurisdiction or they're a sanctioned individual. We need to know enough information about them so that we can do proper tax reporting. So it's almost a complete opposite of

anonymity in that sense. And even for cases like uh, non custodial while it address which doesn't have a name associated with it, there are all these great technological tools like chain analysis and TRM labs that help you identify known while it addresses that maybe they're coming from an exchange, or maybe they're coming from North Korea, and you know, to ban all deposits and withdrawals to and from those addresses. So there's a lot that we know about the network

that's participating in blockchain transactions that's fairly not anonymous. And of course there's different tools that people have built, different kinds of coins that would enable stuff like that. That's, you know, not necessarily something that we're hugely supportive of, but it's it's also independent of the question of, you know,

how where this technology is heading. And then Mike mentioned n f T s and I know Bloomberg had a story earlier this week that showed a really small portion of participants tend to reap the greatest gains when it comes to selling n f T. So I'm wondering, Brett, maybe you can answer this question. Do you think that the n f T market is a manipulated market? And I want to know if you guys participate in these so called white lists where these you know, this tiny

portion of participants does tend to reap these benefits. So what we're seeing is that there's not just a number a small number of people reaping the benefits. There's a small number of people interacting with the n f T ecosystem. Period, and I think that has less to do with you know, manipulation. Let's yeah, maybe there is. It's hard to know exactly

what's going on in that market. I think what is true is that the barrier to entry for for example, n f T marketplaces is pretty high for the existing marketplaces. And that's because let's say you want to go buy an n f T on opency. What do you have to do? Okay, Well, first you have to create a meta mask wallet, which is something which you have to

install a browser extension and create a secret key password. Okay, that you have to open an account maybe an f b X or coin base and or something like this, and buy some ethereum there. Oh, then you have to transfer it out to your meta mass wallet, and you have to connect to your meta mask wallet to open. See we're already six steps in and for the average person,

you're introducing twenty new concepts and it's very difficult. And as long as the n f T world remains very very much a defied product, I think there's going to be a very high barrier to entry for people, and that's why there's so few people interacting with it. That plus the idea of spending six million dollars on an image. It's a little bit hard to swallow, I think for

the average person getting into this business. But it's why we're pretty excited about n f t s in general, because you know, we we do most of the exchange that transactions off chain. It's all bundled with the exchange itself, and we hope that this is the extent that this is going to be a viable market, let's say, for things like blockchain gaming or direct to consumer artwork, that it can exist in a way that's just as easy as you know, buying bitcoin on fd X. Well, I

gotta ask you guys about meme coins. You know, I'm fascinated when you know, you see something like Sheba, you know, do what it did? Or or dose coin, do what it it did? You know, all of a sudden, you're you're looking at a top ten cryptocurrency worth tens of billions of dollars. Sam, I can only imagine your Twitter

mentions are filled with pictures of Sheba. You knows on a deli basis, you know, But walk us through how you guys, sort of what your methodology is when you decide whether or not you know, to allow one of these coins on your exchange? You know, is there is there sort of a hard and fast rules? Is it a case by case type of thing? How how do you decide? All right, let's let's let the let's let the meme point on. Yeah, I s I'll say that there's a lot of factors that go into this, right.

One of these is regulatory understanding, the regulatory framework and jurisdiction of it. And this is different in different countries as well, you know, understanding, you know, is this the security? Is there one one piece of this? I think another thing is looking at what is the demand for this? Right? Is this what our users want? And in the end, you know, we don't try to make investment decisions for

our users. Like we see our users as the ones who are taking charge of their financial future here and we want to enable that. Um And I think one of these is like is there broad risk or something like that from this? You know, I think I think those tend to be it's kind of the biggest factors UM that that at least I think I usually look at on that front. And I'm guessing your users are skewed have more heavily towards the professional all the institutions,

uh n less towards the retails, that's not a safe bet. Yeah, certainly relative to the average exchange and I think, you know, we have like three times point basis daily trading volume and I think they have something like ten times are user base. So speaking of your exchange and Sam, I'm hoping you could maybe enlighten us a little bit more on this. But there have been some reports that your latest funding round values you guys that around thirty two

billion dollars, which is a really big number. So I wanted to ask you about that and whether or not you could confirm those reports for us and feel free to break news on the podcast. We would love that, um. But I also wanted to ask you why so soon you're raising money again following your previous round, which happened just back in October, So you know, you don't don't

want to give certain details of it. I apologize for that, but you know, I think we'll say is that we've had a ton of demand to invest in f ts. We sort of continue to at that demand, and we want to find a way to meet that demand. And so I think a lot of this is just driven by you know, people are asking to invest, and we

want to find a way to stillitate that. That's a big piece of this, you know, I think outside of that, like, I think the biggest things we're thinking about are, you know, there's a lot of really powerful use for MUSS for capital um that that we see in the ecosystems that we want to continue to be able to to fill here. You know, I think that that that is sort of everything from you know, acquisitions, you know, m may backstop funds, So I think those are sort of you know, those

together are are most of what we're looking at. Guess from that perspective. Yeah, I think in general, like if you look at f t X and its growth and how long or rather not long it's been around as a company, the whole timeline is crunched into what we see as a good pace, But for the rest of the capital markets feels like warp speed, and I think that's just you know, well, why wait, there's fleally demand.

There's clearly ways for us to deploy that capital quickly and use that to grow and continue to leverage what we see as our technological platform for all the adjacent areas that we can hook up into and you know, why not continue to to raise or to think about raising you know where we can Yeah, makes sense. I gott admit I've been going to ease you on. You guys, well, Donna will tell you. I usually ask like eleven park questions. Uh,

he does. I'm gonna get a two part question in at least, um, what is you know what's next for f t X? You know what? What are sort of the ambitions? Is it capturing more market share? Are there sort of other you know, lanes of the of the crypto industry you can get into? And the second part is when you buy a Super Bowl ad, do you

at least get a free ticket to the game? I'll say on the second one, I I don't think we got a free ticket to the game with that, although, um, I do think we may be able to stround some tickets up one way or another. Here. You know a few football players in our network, not really sure if we can name them, but there's a couple of people that were adjacent to their You need Brady to have a good playoffs, I guess to get the good seats. I can dream, but talk about those ambitions. You know

what's what? How do you grow the company from here. I mean, uh and obviously such a as Valdanna said, a tour pace of growth. I mean, you know, one can only assume you've got to sort of take a take a deep breath and expect the growth to slow. But what are the ambitions going forward? And we have so many different ones, but you know, I can start with a couple, and you know, say, I'm could take a couple. But our most exciting area for growth right now has to do with derivatives. As you guys know,

most of the world's crypto volume trades and derivatives. And the reason that FBX International became one of the largest, if not the largest crypto platforms in the world, has been through that it's superior technology and risk engine as a derivatives platform. And up to now, we haven't been able to bring those products the US customers because we

didn't have the licenses. But now that we have finished acquiring ledger x and we branded them to f to X Strivatives, we now have the exchange and clearing house licenses to be able to offer these products. And our number one priority right now is working with the CFTC on approval to be able to bring margin derivatives, futures and options on crypto to start, although that's not the only place that that you know, we can go in terms of offering derivatives to US customers directly in a

disintermediated model. So that's by far our biggest opportunity for growth I think in the company. Yeah, I completely agree with that, and I think that's that's that's the single biggest thing that we're looking at here. You know, what else are we looking at? Um? I think you know,

we're looking at growing out our consumer platform. I think you know, we see extremely high upside on that front, and well, we haven't necessarily you know, I don't think that that is anything close to ACE or finished product UM, but I think it's an extremely exciting one and and I think we have a lot to grow on that front too. So I think that that's probably the second

thing that we're thinking the most about right now. But you both skipped the most important question, which is when you guys are going to go public Crickets Crickets filled out at Crickets. It's something we're we're thinking about. We don't know whether or not we will, and it's still run. We we might we want to be ready to do it because we think that there is certainly upside and doing still. We all also it's obviously it's a big production.

We're fortunate between a position where we don't have to you know, where we're we're profitable as it is, and we're able to raising UM private markets as well. So, you know, I think the honest answer there is, you know, we're thinking about it and will we'll see. But I don't know that answer, so I think I can't give you an answer to it. We're here. We're here for you when you're ready to answer that one. Sam, Well, we're willing to take well to have you back to

break that news. UM. But I want to talk about obviously, the big buzzword this year was decentralized finance defy the centralized autonomous organizations. How does an exchange like f t X fit into that universe? Is it more of a risk or more of an opportunity? A little of both? You know, how how do you how do you guys fit into that whole world? I mean, I think it's an opportunity. I think that like we're excited to facilitate UM.

You know, the cryptocurrency ecosystem in general, and I think that you know, what I see in a meeting cases is sort of a world where you know, you have a bunch of of centralized platforms with certain decentralized networks connecting them, and so it's not sort of necessarily in either or from that perspective, you know, we're pretty excited to continue working with a lot of the platforms in the space. On that, I think that there's always gonna be things that make more sense on one side or

on the other. If you look at the growth of Salona as a network, f t X has played a huge role there um not least the fact that f TEX has been the main on ramp into this alan

a DeFi ecosystem. If you want to participate in a application that is using the Salona protocol, well probably your first step is to open an account with fd xtraft xt rest and buy some soul and use that to transfer it to let's say an external wallet where you're going to use it to participate in some application or protocol or a staking pool or whatever it is if

you want to do. And so we've we've always grown alongside them, and as Sam said, I think that the centralized exchanges are going to be the licensed gate keepers. You know, at some point regulation is going to come to defy as well, and it's going to be well, this thing can exist. We need to make sure that

the right people are interacting with those platforms. Well, which platforms are currently set up to be able to k y C millions of users, to make sure that they are the right people to interact with them, well, de centralized exchanges like fd X, and we're also the Fiat on ramps and off ramps. If at the end of the day, you've made some profit on some protocol and you want to take that and actually converted to Fiat car and see, well the only real way to do

that is through the centralized exchanges. So again, we're going to be these license gatekeepers that drop alongside the protocols. And but maybe you can answer this question as well. But I've been doing some reporting on DOWS and somebody I spoke with said to me, you know, not everything needs to be token ized, which I thought was a really good point. Where we're seeing that just more and more and more. So I'm wondering what you you might

make up a statement like that. Yeah, I agree, I think that the use of blockchain in general, not just tokenization, needs to be the correct fit for the purpose. You know, what, what is blockchain really? It's sort of a slow, kind of bad database, but with some really really great features to it. And if you're only using it as a database, or you're only using a token as to get around the fact that it's something less exciting than it is,

then it's not really that interesting. I think that even the word dow, I think some a lot of people are using the doubt term just to meet a group of people as opposed to a truly decentralized entity with a real like a governance token and some kind of blockchain based voting system. So it's a lot of buzzers are being thrown around a lot. But I think the

concept of tokenization is really powerful. I think the idea in the future of tokenizing stocks in the US, for example, the way that Sam has been able to do on FTX International is really powerful and interesting. And there's a lot of great benefits of tokenization, like full of transparency on the blockchain, instant settlements twenty four seven availability, and these are the kinds of things that we should take

away from tokenization. Alright, guys, I can't let you go without getting into some good old fashioned fud appear uncertainty and doubt one of my favorite pieces of FUND I gotta say. And as Sam, I know you mentioned you you talk a little bit about the sort of the potential of quantum computing, uh as computing just gets more

and more powerful going forward. But one really interesting piece of FUND that landed in my inbox was someone making the case that dum computing is actually a risk to crypto if computers get so powerful that they're able to sort of break the cryptography. Is that Is that a valid concern to anyone? Or you know, am I just

reading the wrong emails here? I guess you say briefly, like, I think some cryptographical protocols are in theory potentially vulnerable to it, although it depends on like in practice is very different from in theory. But it could also help read new ones that might be even more powerful. So I think it's like certainly something to pay attention to, although I don't think it's like kill the broader industry

or anything like that. I mean, not to introduce more funds the equation here, but if we were fans of fun. Blockchain technology is built off of commonly known and commonly use cryptographic algorithms, in particular the ones that power all

encryption of messages that are sent between different parties. So I think this, if you're going to be concerned about encryption breaking as there was alt of quantum computing, I think before you worry about bitcoin and not really working anymore, we need to worry worry about governments not being able to send messages to each other in private. And that's like a lot, a lot bigger of a concern than oh, no, Bitcoin is not working as well anymore. That's a great point.

So I I do agree that if we're gonna start to approach that level of technology and application for quantum computing, I think way before that we just need to work in general and alternatives the current modern encryption methods. Yeah, that's that is some high quality foot there. I gotta say, goll donor I have I have a sort of related question and it's actually a market related question, and I didn't want to let you guys go without us bringing

it up. And I'm actually shocked it hasn't come up yet. Which was last weekend. Scrypto crash, which every single person I talked to this week, equity, equity market strategists, everybody just kept bringing up crypto and the crash that we saw. So Sam, I'm hoping you can tell me. You know, something that comes up a lot is it's leverage that was sort of exacerbating what was happening last weekend. So

how levered really is this market? And then I was hearing rumors that it was one whale out there who was doing a lot of the selling last weekend. So can you who who's the whale? And can you confirm that that's true? Yeah, So, I mean I don't I don't know who he's doing it. Um, I can say that I either's like not as much leverage as there once was in crypto. I think that, you know, Circuit twenty twenty, I think it was fairly leverage over the

last year. Um, we've seen a lot more capital under this space, which is Sarah philled out a liquidity base, and you know, I f the extents of relatively low leverage as far as these things go. But you know, I think our average leverage is like to x or something like that, So not zero but not extremely high either. Yeah, I gotta say if I if I know how to write an algorithm, I'd write one that buys bitcoin like every Saturday morning around eight eight am and sells it

on Friday afternoons. Thrown it out there to anyone out there who who's listening. You know you could, you could back test that pretty quickly. Actually, I don't know. I also want a meme coin named after Golden doodles. You know, I don't have a Sheba. You know I want a Golden Doodle coin. I think that one would do well. But we're missing cat points. Do Yeah, I have a Persian kittie. I'd love a coin for her. You need. There's no cat coins. I don't know what they say.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Tiden up your straight jackets. It's time for the craziest things we saw in markets this week? Well, Donny, you kick us off. What's the craziest thing you saw this week in markets? Well, I've I've touched on like weird food products that companies are sort of trying to put out there to attract attention or something. In the past. I think you and I once talked about the Cheetos flavored Mountain Dew I think it was, which I have

yet to try. But this week I saw that there's now an Oreo flavored or Oreo adjacent wine brand that's coming out. So there's a bottle of red wine and there's actual pictures of Oreos on it, and I guess it doesn't have any Oreo cookies crushed inside it, but it's supposed to have like a chocolate flavor, and it just, honestly, I don't know what to make of it. This is what happens when you legalize weed. I think this is the products that you get as a result. That's my

take on things. I don't know how that has to do with markets PULD, but but I'll allow it. It's because it's these companies trying to so is it like for Mountain Dew, it's PepsiCo. Okay, okay, fair enough. Yeah, they're trying to monetize on these like weird flavors. I think. I don't know it's it's weird to me. It's weird to me, so it counts. I'll give you our loyal listener, Twiggy Sunday it in with a pretty good one too. This is not at all markets related but it's so

crazy that it's worth bringing up. In Saudi Arabia, they every year hold a beauty contest for camels. Let me repeat that, Donna, a beauty contest for camels and there's a big scandal and it's this is high stakes. There's like sixty six million dollars in prizes. Big scandal this year. Uh, forty camels were disqualified because they had been injected with botox and had other uh cosmetic procedures performed on then. So you you must be making this. That's courtesy of

CBS News via Twiggy Sunday True Story. Oh my gosh, who wins the sixty six million dollars? The camels? Miss Camel? I guess you know Miss Camel Universe, the you know, the most beautiful camel. Uh? So I again not I don't know if you can figure out the markets angle, but it's money, allow it. I'll allow it. Uh. That's really good because it's it's heavy on crazy, light on markets. How about you, guys, you got anything for us for the craziest things you've seen over at f t X

this week. Well, I don't think I'm gonna be able to beat either of those two things, and I also need to call Peter right after the podcast. Um what what's crazy? I saw this week was Sushi swap. Um. I don't know if you guys been following the drama on Twitter, but you know there's there's all this drama around the chief technology officer, one of the main developers of Sushi that made a very big public display of his unhappiness with working for Sushi and then decided to leave.

And you know, the token is probably suffering as a result. And I think it goes to show how much, you know, companies and projects really depend on the software developers. And think about fts. We have only, you know, a small handful of software developers, you know, something like twelve compared to maybe the thousands that might exist at other companies, you know, and we are awesome because we can go super nimble and quick with a very numerous developers at

the same time. To think about a company, so it depended on one such that they can get out there. I'm really tanking the whole project. It's pretty terrifying in a lot of ways. Yeah, all right, I want to give you mine now. I don't know if you have one, Sam, but I'll let you think about it, I'll give you mine. Mine actually came from the hearing you were at our requiter here Bloombergy Crystal Kim wrote a story about a

few crazy things about there. I'm not not gonna get into the big baseball analogy, which I uh I thought was a good one. But Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California became an inspiration for cryptocurrency token creators after he disparaged the coin eat coin world of digital assets. And I think he was he was telling a story. I think it was this children's book. There was an old woman who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly, and then you know she swallowed it.

I think it was a frog to eat the fly, and then a bigger animal to to eat eat the frog. And his point was he went on to say that bitcoin could be unseated by ether, which could be replaced by doze totally be replaced by hamster coin, and then cobra coin, and then would mongoose coin commedya cobra coin. Um So, needless to say, the people watching the show instantly went out and created, uh, mongoose coin and goose coin. There's a mong coin, all sorts of cryptocurrencies, uh inspired

by this uh the series yesterday. So Brett, I don't know if you're gonna you guys will be trade mongoose coin soon. But who knows? That was it was quite a line of questioning. I respect the skepticism though, I think, you know it, thinking about what is the utility of some of the crypto assets is a reasonable thing to do, and so I think it's it's an important for us to answer and think about as an industry. But but yeah, it wasn't without its colorful moments that have found its

way unto the crypto Twitter of course. Yeah, absolutely where they where they truly belong. Well, I think all those convoluted questions help you guys prepare for my my ridiculous questions. So it's good good training for that. And with that, Sam, I don't know, Brett, Brett had a pretty good crazy thing. I don't know if he can stop him, Yeah, you know, I mean, but honestly, it's the craziest thing I think for me was just how not crazy the hearing was.

I think it was just massively above my expectations in terms of being you know, in terms of being I think like constructive and I think sometimes something in this environment not crazy is the new crazy. Yeah, I agree. I was saying before you got on, you know you guys, Uh, those hearings can get pretty ugly fast, and I think

the the sort of mutual respect and dialogue was pretty interesting. Um, it's kind of what you want out of out of that type of hearing, um, rather than people just trying to get a good SoundBite or you know, viral video clip, which is sometimes would it seems like going on so truly crazy that the hearing didn't go off the rails? I agree with that guy's I think that might be all the time we have all. Donna, what do you think should we let these guys off the hook? Yeah?

I think we should let them go. But they gave us so much of their their time, So thank you both so much. Thank you guys. Yeah, thank you. What goes up, We'll be back next week. Until then, you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal website and app or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more listeners can find us, and you can find us on Twitter, follow me at Reaganonymous.

The Dota Hirich is that theill Dotta Hirich. You can also follow Bloomberg Podcasts at podcast and Thank you to Charlie Pelletta. Bloomberg Radio What Goes Up is produced by Laura Carlson. The head of Bloomberg Podcast is Francesco Levy. Thanks for listening, See you next time.